Memorandum submitted by The British Film Institute (BFI)

 

Opening statement

The British Film Institute is constituted by Royal Charter to promote understanding of the arts of film and television in the UK. It was established in 1933 primarily with the aim of conserving the UK's film and television heritage in the national interest. In addition to the National Archive, it currently manages BFI Southbank - the UK's national cinematheque; a DVD, book, and education resources publishing arm; the BFI National Library, which houses the most extensive collection of film-related publications in the world; and produces both the London Film Festival and London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

 

The Education Department of the BFI leads on advocacy for the moving image in UK education contexts, produces education materials in print and online, and produces a programme of education activity aimed at a range of audiences at BFI Southbank.

 

In 2005 BFI Education was awarded £105,000 by Creative Partnerships to carry out research (called Special Effects) into the distinctive learning outcomes associated with film through CP film projects. The research was carried out in nine case study areas between October 2005 and November 2006. The report will be published in different forms during the second half of 2007.

 

The responses below draw on the Special Effects research where explicitly indicated, as well as on research carried out by the BFI previously. The position articulated here is that of BFI, and not necessarily of the other research partners.

 

How should we define creativity in the context of education and child care?

 

We agree with the submission of the Media Education Association that a helpful definition of creativity can be found in the report of the National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (DfEE, 1999). Creativity in their definition involved critical evaluation; wasn't just arts-based; was multi-dimensional; and involved some degree of skill and knowledge.

 

Although we should acknowledge that in Special Effects we didn't probe interviewees very deeply for their understanding of the creative process, we found few examples of teachers, pupils, or creative practitioners being able to articulate at any length what it meant to be creative, or how creativity might be fostered, either in relation to film, or more widely. The most commonly cited examples of 'being creative' involved some sense of freedom from normal school behaviour, and of a sense of the social and transformative or imaginative aspects of creativity.

 

On the basis of this, and other research into creative work with film (Reid et al, 2002; Harvey et al, 2002) we suggest that for creativity in general we need the following:

· A shared language, and shared understanding, of what conditions sponsor creative activity, and what creative outcomes might be (beyond the production of artefacts).

· This would counter the dominant - and unhelpful - notion that creativity is a mysterious and interior process, available to some, not many, involving freedom from any sort of context and constraint.

· We would assert the opposite, that constraints (rules, categories, limits) are crucial in managing any creative output, and in fact generate those creative outcomes (see Sharples 1999).

· That creativity is both social, and personal; in fact, that the creative process is a cycle that moves between the personal/ private, and social/ public domains. (see Ross et al 1993)

· That crucial to a conception of creativity shared between creators (pupils, children) and professionals (teachers, creative practitioners) is an explicit, elaborated, and shared language articulating the creative process.

 

In relating creativity specifically to film, we have found:

· An elision of creative work with technical skills, rather than creativity in film being related to wider aesthetic understandings, decisions, and choices

· An over-emphasis on the finished product, at the expense of generating learning outcomes from the creative process

· A reluctance to allow children to edit their own films, which takes them out of the final, and most crucial, stage of the creative film-making process.

·

 

 

Also from the Robinson Report, we suggest there needs to be some recalibration of creativity to acknowledge children's cultural entitlement. Where the moving image is concerned, children's cultural entitlement has two dimensions: the entitlement to have their home moving image cultural experiences valued and built on in school, as well as their entitlement to experience a wider range of moving image culture than that currently chosen by (or more likely, for) them both at home and at school. In the Special Effects research, we found few examples of these entitlements being understood or articulated.

 

What effect have existing creative initiatives had on teachers' skills and ability to work with creative professionals in the classroom?

 

Although in Special Effects we didn't specifically probe for impacts of creative film projects on the ability of teachers to work with creative professionals, nor on their teaching skills, we found some examples of strong collaborative relationships between creative professionals and teachers, as well some projects where there was very little apparently positive learning for the teachers. This evidence, alongside other research (Reid et al, 2002) enables us, very tentatively, to suggest how teachers and creative professionals might work alongside each other in a productive way:

· teachers should not be confined to 'managerial' roles in creative projects: they should be encouraged to think of themselves as having creative abilities and dimensions (as many of them do) and enabled to develop those dimensions in the classroom, rather than relying on creative input always coming from outside practitioners.

· Teachers and creative professionals should plan activity collaboratively - before the work starts, but also constantly reviewing work in progress. They should share aims and objectives explicitly, and review and revise these systematically. Their aims should cover more than the single product of the activity, and include professional development objectives for each of them, and a range of learning outcomes that are made explicit.

· Teachers and creative professionals should share the evaluation of any creative learning programme (regardless of whether there is external monitoring), and this evaluation should be formative (throughout the process) as well as summative (at the end), and against shared explicit criteria (What are the children learning? What am I learning? etc)

 

What are the implications of a curriculum shift in favour of creativity for the training of heads, teachers, and cultural animators?

 

A curriculum shift in favour of creativity should encompass more than arts subjects, or arts practice in other subjects. It should be led by an informed understanding of the conditions that support creativity (see above) and the language in which creativity can be discussed, described, and evaluated. The training needs for all participants therefore would encompass this deeper, and more explicit shared understanding of creativity.

 

In the experience of Special Effects, it was sometimes the case that even where creative film projects engaged in some kind of preparatory work, the school itself was often less involved.

 

A greater curriculum emphasis on creativity ought to militate against a current feature of creative work: the one-off creative project. An equal relationship between creative professionals and schools would entail schools taking a more active role in commissioning artists to become involved in the curriculum, and creative work being less driven by the interests and experience of the artists. There was some evidence that this latter was the case in the programmes we looked at in Special Effects.

 

How might parents and education and care providers be persuaded to encourage creativity in the home?

 

Along with music, film has a distinctive position among artforms in its presence in children's out of school lives. Some children interviewed as part of Special Effects made films at home, using mobile phones or other cameras. Nearly all of the children cited cinema-going and watching films and TV at home as a popular pastime. However, this expertise, and these experiences were rarely known about or drawn on by the practitioners running the projects we examined.

 

Research has shown (Marsh, 2006) that even from an early age, children build up a large repository of skills, knowledge and expertise around media culture that is acknowledged by parents and carers, but less well understood by teachers. A simple set of techniques (see BFI/ DfES 2004) can help teachers address this quite easily.

 

What special contribution do the arts have to make to creative education?

 

Special Effects, the research project into the distinctive learning outcomes associated with film, was sponsored by Creative Partnerships between 2005-2007, and carried out by the National Foundation for Education Research and BFI (report forthcoming, 2007). The data on learning outcomes were derived from film projects in nine Creative Partnerships areas. The distinctive outcomes we found were:

 

· Affective outcomes, particularly immediate enjoyment and a sense of achievement and satisfaction

· Film knowledge, appreciation and skills, especially film skills and techniques and film knowledge

· Social development, especially working with others and teamwork

 

Other outcomes identified in some of the case studies, but with moderate levels of impact were:

· Personal development, in particular self-confidence

· Transferable effects, especially transfer to other subjects and areas of learning

· Communication skills, solely within the generic communication domain (eg speaking, listening, presenting)

· Developments in creativity, mainly in terms of 'feeling more creative', or enhanced abilities to use and develop their own ideas and imaginations.

 

The effects that were nominated least often, and with limited intensity were:

· Changes in attitudes towards, and involvement in, film activities, although (intended) particuipation in film outside school was cited across all nine case studies

· Knowledge, skills, and appreciation beyond moving image

· Social and cultural knowledge

· Thinking skills

 

 

To what degree should creative education be structured to accommodate the needs of creative industries?

 

Our experience in the Special Effects research found that some aspects of the projects we looked - albeit it in a distorted way - mirrored industry practice in film and moving image. Perhaps because film practice (especially film-making) has no secure role in the mandatory curriculum (for 5-14 year olds; Film and Media Studies for 14-19 year olds is very well established, if only taken up by 8% of each age cohort), the most typical model for film project work in education is taken from industry - a pre-production, production, exhibition model.

 

In this model there is a strong separation of roles, which leads for example, to children commonly not being fully involved in the editing of their work. We drew attention in our report to other models of film education practice - the Abingdon Film Unit, the Educational Video Center in New York, or the report into one CP school film programme by the London School of Economics (Humphrys and Lorac, 2007). These projects tend to offer a model different to the one taken from the industry, emphasising the importance of preparation time, for example, and are more structured around learning outcomes, that production outcomes.

 

In Special Effects we found very little evidence of other interests being served by the creative film projects we investigated: building a sense of civic participation or community cohesion, for example, or learning about other cultures and communities.

 

What evidence is there that a creative curriculum assists achievement in other areas?

 

Overall, Special Effects found that the greatest impact of creative learning involving film were affective (to do with pleasure and enjoyment), skills in working with film, and social development (see above). There were moderate impacts on knowledge and skill transfer from film to other curriculum areas - in some case studies, where curriculum transfer was actively planned for, film had a higher degree of impact in this area.

 

What is the impact of a creative curriculum on

a) pupil confidence, motivation, behaviour and team work,

 

Evidence from Special effects suggests that working with film has the greatest impact in terms of affective and social dimensions. It generates in children a sense of achievement and satisfaction, and helps build social confidence and skills, for example in teamwork.

 

b) literacy, numeracy, ICT, and communication skills?

 

Evidence from Special Effects also showed some moderate development in communication skills, and greater impact in film-specific ICT skills. Elsewhere, the BFI has been promoting work with film in the literacy curriculum. Evidence there, though not systematically collected, indicates that a 'film-rich' curriculum, particularly using short films, has an immediate impact on children's reading, writing, and speaking and listening skills. This approach has been endorsed by the DfES (as was) Primary National Strategy in its review of the Primary Literacy Framework. No systematic research or data collection to support this has ever been undertaken, and is long overdue.

 

How can creative achievement among young people be acknowledged and assessed?

 

In Special Effects, we found some explicit evidence of an association between positive, affective outcomes in pupils, and the degree to which they owned, designed and managed the film work they were engaged in.

 

For the BFI, this leads us to believe that more attention needs to be paid to the extent to which young people own - and know they own - the intellectual property rights in their creative work. Very often copyright in young people's film work lies with the production company that manages the project, or the funding organisation that supports it. One of the ways of raising the awareness of young people of issues of copyright would be to start with the IPR in work they make themselves.

 

How can creativity be embedded across the curriculum and within the philosophy of schools?

 

BFI is finding that, perversely, because film work has no formal role in the statutory curriculum in England, it is possible to find niches for it across the curriculum, especially where it addresses educational 'challenges' (boys' writing; retention of pupils in MFL; teaching Citizenship) or where it 'adds sparkle'. Where Creative Partnership-sponsored film work is concerned, attention needs to be paid to the 'project-ist' nature of the work, which is in many ways inimical to the reproductive nature of the curriculum. In one way, film projects offer a relief (for pupils and teachers!) from the curriculum, but this in itself makes it less likely that creative film work will be embedded in the curriculum. A film-rich curriculum model can be found in a number of schools in England - in Specialist Media Arts Colleges (for example Parkside Community College in Cambridge) at secondary level, and in some Creative Partnerships schools (for example Columbia Primary School in Tower Hamlets, or Robin Hood Primary School in Birmingham) at primary.

 

How can creativity in schools best be linked to the real world of work and leisure?

 

We should be cautious about a simple dichotomy between the 'real world' of work, and the world of school. For most pupils, school is an all too real world, and in its hierarchies, norms and expectations, compulsions, and rigid structures, is all very similar to the world of work they will encounter! Film, and film education, should be seen as occupying these spaces in particular, creative, ways:

· film in school shouldn't be seen as purely entertainment (though learning about film should be fun!);

· film-making shouldn't be seen as just supporting a set of film-related vocational skills, but enhancing people's understanding and enjoyment of film in its broadest senses - having the same relation as writing does to reading;

· film can contribute to civic engagement and community cohesion (this sector is often left out, between 'work' and 'leisure.')

 

A new kind of film education practice, which integrates the 'three Cs' of creative, critical, and cultural work, would help build bridges between school, work, the public sphere, and leisure. Schools often jump at 'creative' work that is production focused, as an alternative to the perceived grind of the curriculum. They thus miss opportunities to enable children to express themselves as individuals, or as members of communities, or to explore aspects of the world through film. Their creative work is often not linked to a critical understanding of the medium, or of other young people's work, or of experience of films made in cultures other than Hollywood.

 

July 2007

 

 

References

 

BFI/ DfES (2004) Look Again: a guide to moving image education 3-11. London: BFI

 

Harvey, I., Skinner, M., and Parker, D. (2002) Being Seen, Being Heard: young people and moving image production. Leicester: The National Youth Agency

 

Humphrys, P. and Lorac, C. (2007) Creative Partnerships London East Pathways to Value Evaluation Programme. http://www.creative-partnerships.com/content/gdocs/pathwaystovalue.pdf

 

Marsh, J., Brooks, G., Huges, J., Ritchie, L., Roberts, S., and Wright, K. (2006) Digital Beginnings: Young children's use of popular culture, media, and new technologies. http://www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk/docs/DigitalBeginningsReport.pdf

 

Reid, M., Burn. A., and Parker. D. (2002) Evaluation of the BECTa Pilot Digital Video Project, BECTa, http://www.becta.org.uk/research/reports/digitialvideo/index

 

Robinson, K. /National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (1999). All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture, and Education. Sudbury, Suffolk, DfEE Publications: NACCE, 220

 

Ross, M., Radnor, H., Mitchell, S., and Bierton, C. (1993) Assessing Achievement in the Arts. Milton Keynes: OUP

 

Sharples, M. (1999) How We Write: An Account of Writing as Creative Design. London: Routledge